


take a glorious bite out of the whole world

by stayingputwouldbeablunder



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Feels, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, kind of pre-slash, post 3x12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-24 23:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stayingputwouldbeablunder/pseuds/stayingputwouldbeablunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now the loft is warm in the winter sun and Derek is nowhere to be found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take a glorious bite out of the whole world

**Author's Note:**

> I never realized the loft’s roof was glass until the finale?
> 
> Post 3x12 feels, pretty much.
> 
> Unbeta'd, oh my.

It’s warm.

That’s the only thing he can think. It’s the only thing he can say to empty room. The sun is streaming down through the hole in the middle of dingy glass Derek never got around to cleaning, high noon, and the loft is warm; it’s not right. Derek always kept the place at the brink of causing air conditioned induced hypothermia because the pack runs hot.

Now the loft is warm in the winter sun and Derek is nowhere to be found.

After, after _everything_ , after Scott recalled what happened with Jennifer and Deucalion as he helped his pack out of the root cellar, Isaac had asked where Derek went. Scott frowned, mentioned something about Cora, and pulled his mom into a tight hug, muttering something to her about seeing his dad. The Sheriff had patted her on the back and ruffled Scott’s hair before saying they all were sitting down the following week and having a very long discussion about werewolves. Stiles glanced from his father to Melissa then over to where Isaac was standing close to Allison and her father.

When they finally got to the clinic to check on Lydia, the twins were gone, as was Cora. Stiles asked if Derek had picked her up and Lydia nodded before wrapping him in a hug and asking him to take her home. Stiles sat with her in the backseat of Allison’s Camry, holding her hand as she leaned against his shoulder, still dazed. She kissed his cheek when they arrived at her house and said Cora was the alpha of the Hale pack now.

At most, he’d thought it would have been a week before anyone heard from Derek and his sister. But one week became two, three. Scott said he didn’t know when or if Derek was ever coming back, but that he hoped he would. Stiles stated that their friendship had come full circle, that they _really_ were brothers now, and Scott laughed before throwing an arm across his shoulder.

It’s in the dead of night that the darkness around his heart becomes unbearable. At school, he has Scott. He has Lydia, who is glued to his side. They haven’t talked about the kiss since it happened and it’s for the best. Stiles loves her, he does, but there’s no longer that spark, that infatuation he had. He thinks Lydia feels the same way too. She understands, though, his need to close to people now. How he’s become tactile in a way he’s only ever been with Scott.

Most nights, Stiles can’t sleep. He fluctuates between insomnia and ten hours naps, skips school and begs his father to call him in as being sick. He technically is when there’s this fuzzy void around his head and the world seems like it’s about to cave in. On the bad days, he sticks close to Scott and they bear through it together. Like best friends, like _brothers_.

It’s not a surprise really that it has taken him three months to finally wander to the loft. Isaac gave him the spare Derek had said to only ever use to emergencies with little resistance when he asked to borrow it at school yesterday. His smile went soft when he uncurled his hand away from Allison to pull it off his key ring. Lydia had slipped her hand into his after Isaac handed him the key, tugging him away from the couple that no one saw coming to talk about Hofstader’s butterfly. Stiles called her a huge dork and she smiled before hip checking him into a row of lockers.

The loft is still abandoned, air crisp with the scent of winter. Stiles idly wonders if he would be able to smell scents belonging to the pack if he were a werewolf. The main room is covered in bits of trash, a couple of leaves, and a paper lantern that must have floated in during New Year’s. The table is in desperate need of dusting and the couch looks like it was rained on and never fully dried. Stiles sits down in the middle anyways, stares up at the sun, and asks the desolate space around him where Derek went.

A year ago, that would have been a question he never would have imagined himself saying. Prior to the ‘ _get off my lawn_ ’ confrontation, he hadn’t seen Derek since the night of the fire: his father had brought him to the station while he interviewed what was left of the Hales. Stiles had wandered up to Derek, broken and fragile, and rambled about animals that undergo embryonic diapause.

Sometimes he wonders if Derek remembers meeting him that night.

After Scott turned, they were forced to work together. Derek didn’t like Stiles and Stiles didn’t like Derek. It was a mutual fact both agreed upon. But time and time again, from the night at the hospital when Peter revealed himself to be very much not comatose to the night they spent paralyzed in the police station, they wound up saving one another.

Then the summer happened. Allison went to France, Derek taught Jackson how to control the shift before he left for London, Scott went to summer school, and Stiles found himself alone for the first time in years. It was just a thought one day, that he should show up at the loft and ask if the alpha needed help locating his missing betas. Isaac answered the door, grinning wide, and within the hour, Derek said he could use the help.

Two and half months transformed what was once begrudging acquaintanceship to budding friendship. But they weren’t friends, not really, not yet. Derek told him secrets he was sworn to keep to himself about the Alphas and his missing betas. Stiles thought about the night in the pool, when Derek said they didn't trust one another, and how that was no longer true.

The night Derek and Scott broke into the vault was the first time he ever considered Derek an ally. The banter they had perfected over the previous months but Stiles got to be the voice of the reason. Derek relied on him to figure out how to get into the vault, humored him when he tried to describe the limited space in the shaft, listened when Stiles called to warn both he and Scott of what was coming. It hurt when Derek had said ‘ _not you_ ’, still does, but Stiles understood.

As the mess with the Darach - _Jennifer_ , Julia, whatever the fuck her name was - progressed, they found themselves thrown together again. Only this time instead of being forced to cooperate, helping each other was done willingly. When Kali and the twins forced Derek to kill Boyd, Stiles only stopped in the doorway long enough to survey what had happened. Cora pushing past him unfroze him from where he stood.

Stiles pretends his hand wasn’t shaking when he placed it on Derek’s shoulder and squeezed gently but hard enough to let the man know he was there. That that was his way of comforting Derek because he knew the alpha would never see this as being anyone’s fault but his own. Derek’s hands shook violently until he finally broke, let out a few sobs, and Cora quieted from where she laid over Boyd’s lifeless body.

Stiles doesn’t know how long he stood there, hand on Derek’s shoulder, fingers going pruned from the wet shirt beneath them.

The feeling of wanting, _needing_ to finally just snap, at someone, anyone who threatened his family, came to a head the night in hospital. Between hopelessly staring at Derek, trying to convince him that Jennifer took his _father_ , and arming himself against a pack of alphas with only a wooden bat, his nerves were fried. All it took was Scott saying they _lost_ her. Stiles unleashed months’ worth of pent up anger at Derek because for the second time, the person he was screwing was out to kill them all.

The look Derek gave him when he mentioned Kate, not by name but by her actions, was hardly his concern.

Derek told him what had happened one rainy night in July. Stiles hadn’t prompted him in any way; he’d had theories, yes, guessed there was more to her story than the alpha ever let on. He sat uncomfortably on the floor as Derek recounted their entire relationship. When Stiles left that night, he apologized, not knowing what for.

That was when he knew Derek finally trusted him.

Trying to wake Derek up had had all the triggers that should have sent him into a panic attack. Stiles had been shaking, screaming at Derek, breath ragged. He’s convinced that the elevator probably reeked of fear and chaos. When Derek _finally_ came to, as their hands were clasped together when Stiles pulled him to his feet, he could feel his pulse pounding in his ears.

Three days later it was all over. Things calmed down. Derek left Beacon Hills and didn’t say goodbye to anyone.

Stiles gets it, that this town is nothing but bad memories for the Hales. He gets that their lives, the lives of everyone in both Derek and Scott’s packs, have been a whirlwind of poor decisions and their consequences. He gets that the chance to rebuild the family he thought was gone is Derek’s priority. Stiles _is_ happy for him, happy that Derek and Cora can become that away from where they have lost everyone they ever loved.

Peter is still around, though, feeding fallacies and folklore to Scott like it’s his responsibility. Stiles doesn’t like it but Scott is the alpha: judgement calls are up to him and him alone. Secretly, Stiles is hoping for the day Peter comes at Lydia and she takes him out with the poise of Grace Kelly and the badassery of Michelle Rodriguez.

Lydia likes this idea too.

A cloud creeps across the sun and Stiles shifts from where he is on the couch to edge of Derek’s bed. He remembers how the man had shut down after he pulled Boyd from Cora’s grip. At the time, Stiles wasn’t sure where he took Boyd, or Erica for that matter. It took a trip to Beacon Hills’ graveyard at the edge of the Preserve to figure it out.

Stiles had gone to visit his mother, to tell her about what he had done to save his father, how the constant threat of losing himself to darkness was only quelled when he remembered how much that would hurt his dad. He had spent three hours sitting in front of her headstone, picking blades of grass from where they were overgrowing a patch of lilies he had planted as a child until there was nothing but a ring of dirt.

Out of curiosity, he wandered around in what he now knows is the preluding haze to feeling numb, searching for Paige’s grave. He found it, close to the southeast corner of the graveyard. On the way back to the Jeep his feet took him another direction until he has standing in the middle of eight graves all reading _Hale_. It was there, next to _Laura_ and diagonal from _Talia_ , that he found _Erica Reyes_ and _Vernon Milton Boyd IV_.

When he told Isaac, the beta asked if he and Scott would come along with him when he went to visit their graves. Isaac sat between their headstones, head buried in his hands, and cried. Scott rubbed his back and Stiles pressed his forehead against Isaac’s shoulder, wondering when they had become close enough for something this intimate to occur between them.

Somewhere in the streets below, a police cruiser’s sirens echo between brick walls and up into the hole in the ceiling. Stiles sinks onto the mattress, brushing debris from the comforter on the floor. Something chirps at him, skittering across the cement, and he stands. A chattering noise comes from inside the bed and the scratching ceases.

He wanders the loft for another hour, looking for clues as to where Derek may have gone. No one has heard from them, not since they left. Then again, no one has tried to contact them. Scott thinks they probably went back to New York; that’s where Derek’s entire life had been before everything went haywire with Peter.

Stiles is about to leave when he remembers the one hiding place Derek kept his most prized possessions - a picture of his mother, a handwritten note of Laura’s, and a tattered copy of _Brave New World_. Prying the floorboards up from the room the spiral staircase leads to takes little over half an hour and Stiles’ fingers are bleeding by the time he pulls the last nail free from a joist in the floor.

The picture, note, and book are gone of course, but there is a folded piece of paper in their place. Stiles pulls it from where it’s been hidden for god knows how long and wipes it across his flannel shirt. There’s a slanted _S_ on the front, and yeah, that is definitely Derek’s handwriting.

It doesn’t say much. Stiles reads it four times in a row, blood staining the edges of the paper, eyes darting back and forth over the faded ink. Helping his father slave over open investigation case folders cues him to notice the tiniest things, like where Derek’s fluid handwriting became rushed or where he hesitated with following a word through to the end.

Stiles leaves the loft with the note in his pocket, floorboards shoved and kicked back down into place, blood caked underneath his fingertips as he slides the door closed. He locks it for the sake of not knowing whether Derek would appreciate a squatter living in the place.

On the way home, Stiles intentionally drives past the Preserve with the windows down. He tosses the key into the woods as far as he can, closing his eyes long enough to ignore where it lands. Luckily no one is on the road.

It’s another two months before Derek comes back. Stiles and Scott are on the lacrosse field in the middle of the night, using the headlights from the Jeep to light the field since the school finally smartened up and locked the box to access the field’s lighting system. Stiles is chastising his best friend for almost dislocating his shoulder when Scott’s eyes glow red and he bares his teeth.

Stiles turns around to Derek standing next to the Jeep, hands in the pockets of a leather jacket he hasn’t seen in almost a year, face stoic. Scott seems to recognize who it is at the same time Stiles does and starts laughing from where he’s standing in the goal. Derek smiles then, like he never has before, and says ‘ _aren't you supposed to be at home_ ’. Scott doubles over.

Stiles is still in a sort of shock until Derek turns to him, smile fading. He takes a step forward, glancing over to where Scott is still on the ground, before saying ‘ _hey_ ’. Stiles holds his breath.

He doesn’t know what he drops first, whether it’s his hand from where he was massaging his shoulder or his lacrosse stick, but when he thinks back on this in the future he doubts he’ll care; he just starts walking from the midfield line. Stiles doesn’t hesitate as he wraps his arms around Derek’s neck, drops his head onto the man’s shoulder, and whispers ‘ _I missed you_ ’. Derek chuckles, voice light, and says ‘ _me too_ ’ before returning the hug, arms sliding beneath Stiles’ jacket and around his waist.

Scott ruins it five seconds later and tackles them both to the ground. Stiles finds himself in a pile of limbs, his best friend already talking a mile a minute, and Derek trying to untangle himself from the beneath the two teenage boys who are pinning him down. They spend an hour on the edge of the lacrosse field catching up, Stiles only standing to shut the Jeep’s lights off so his baby’s battery doesn’t die.

When he sits back down, it’s right next to Derek, close enough their thighs are touching. Scott doesn’t say anything, just continues on about what Deaton has told him about kitsunes. Stiles leans back on his palms, smiling into the hood of his jacket when Derek’s hand comes to settle on his hip. The man taps once, twice, over the fabric of his jeans pocket, like he knows what’s hidden there.

By the time Stiles gets home, it’s one and his dad is already asleep in bed. He walks through the house as quietly as he can, slips into his room, and locks the door behind him. He rifles through several shoe boxes he has shoved underneath his bed until he finds the one he’s looking for and sets the lid on the ground. He pulls the note Derek wrote him and _only_ him from his pocket - the note that he’s carried with him every day since finding it, the note that’s still stained with his blood and smudged from where he’s traced the script with his fingers - and places it in the box alongside a framed photograph of his mother in her wedding dress, a picture he and Scott drew when they were nine, and a bookmark with pressed monkshood flowers that Lydia made him for Christmas.

Stiles doesn’t read the note again for months, already knowing from memory what it says.

\- - - 

_S,_

_I know we don’t always agree but on this we should: we need to heal. All of us. You, Scott, and Allison. Lydia and Isaac. Cora and I. We left so we could._

_I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye. Cora says I should have, at least to Scott, Isaac, and you, if anyone. I disagreed._

_I'll come back soon. I can’t say when for sure, but I_ will _come back._

_You and I have unfinished business._

_\- D_

_(don’t pretend you haven’t thought about ~~it~~ ~~us~~ it.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Well that turned out a lot differently than I had planned. Apparently I had a lot more feels over _Lunar Ellipse_ than I thought I did.
> 
> I know people are taking issue with the way the season ended but I am okay with most of it. Yes, there are issues and topics that were never addressed that piss me off, (i.e. what happened to Boyd and Erica’s bodies, why Jeff Davis can NEVER kill off the bad guys, an endless list of questions about mountain ash and emissaries) but overall I’m okay with what transpired. Derek deserves to be happy and whether that is ultimately in Beacon Hills or someplace else remains up in the air. And I’m okay with that. I mean, Hoechlin’s coming back (thank goodness), but leaving it open for _Derek_ is what I’m getting at. Does that make sense?
> 
> The title of this comes from the song _You Could Be Happy_ by Snow Patrol. So pretty and sad. Basically, feels.
> 
> I’m still primarily working on ‘ _now we spin_ ’ and have several other fics in the works. Come yell at me on [tumblr](http://stayingputwouldbeablunder.tumblr.com). It’ll keep me in check for getting shit done.


End file.
